Home News Local News A defining moment for Southold’s agricultural industry

A defining moment for Southold’s agricultural industry

File photo: Peter Blasl

Southold Town has armed itself with a new set of definitions for regulating, protecting and advancing the many expressions of the agricultural industry on the North Fork.

The definitions adopted by the town board this week were the product of more than five years of effort by the Southold agricultural advisory committee, whose members aimed to tackle the complex task of defining the very essence of agriculture. The complexity of their chore was compounded by the vast changes in the industry and the evolving types of agriculture now found across the town.

Agriculture on the North Fork has long encompassed more than growing potatoes and cauliflower. Nursery crops and sod, wine grapes and more recently hops, have taken their place alongside traditional field crops. Greenhouse growing, aquaculture and mariculture are now important segments of the industry. This evolution of agriculture was not reflected in an outdated town code. The agricultural advisory committee, chaired by Chris Baiz, set out to rectify that and drafted new definitions in an effort to modernize the zoning code.

It was very much a moving target, as Baiz admits.

Even he took to the podium in the town hall meeting room to suggest changes to the draft the committee he chairs presented for public hearing. Other members of the committee did likewise.

At an April 11 hearing on the proposed code changes, Baiz and others, including a representative of the Long Island Farm Bureau, raised concerns over the phrase “from a single farm operation” as part of the definitions of “agricultural processing,” “agricultural processing building,” and “on farm direct marketing building.”

“I forgot the word ‘primarily,’” Baiz told the board during the hearing.

They worry that farmers will not be allowed to bring any products in from other local farms for processing or sale.

Jessica Anson, the public policy director for the Long Island Farm Bureau called the phrase “overly restrictive language.”

“This does not correlate to current agricultural practices,” she said during the April 11 hearing. She too asked for the word “primarily” to be inserted before the phrase “from a single farm operation.”

Anson also said the code presented for public hearing was not the last draft seen by the ag advisory committee.

The supervisor said she was mistaken. No changes had been made to the draft that came out of the committee, he told her.

Russell also said the new code is not more restrictive; it is adding processing as a use, which is currently not allowed except for wineries, he said. The town is trying to prevent processing facilities that are not growing products on site, but are merely processing facilities, Russell said.

Southold shellfish farmer Karen Rivara said at the hearing that she too is concerned about the “single farm” provision, since shellfish growers can’t have a farm stand on their underwater farmland. “Many sell their products at farm stands operated by other farmers.

“We all share concern of someone bringing product from outside of town and saying it’s local,” Rivara said.

Another provision that drew concern from small farm operators at the public hearing was the definition of “bona fide farm operation.”

For a farm operation to qualify as a “bona fide” farm operation on a parcel of land smaller than seven acres, it must have annual average gross sales value of $50,000 or more or must have been issued a farm stand operator permit. Larger farms only must have annual average gross sales value of $10,000 or more.

Beekeeper Laura Clarry of Blossom Meadow Farm told the board she bought a two-acre parcel in 2015.

“Land is so expensive. All farming and farmers should be embraced. The financial threshold should be $10,000 for all size farms,” she said during the hearing.

The supervisor said those values are set by the state Agriculture and Markets department.

“Ag and Markets really doesn’t understand how we operate down here and the high cost of land here,” Chris Baiz chimed in.

The new code provisions tweak the definition of agriculture — to include aquaculture and mariculture — and define: agricultural production building, agricultural processing, agricultural processing building, processed agricultural product, on farm operation direct marketing, on farm direct marketing building, farm operation, bona fide farm operation, aquaculture, mariculture, farmhouse and roadside stand.

After some discussion at Tuesday’s work session, board members were inclined to move forward and Baiz agreed.

“This has been a very long collaborative process to better identify what is agriculture in the Town of Southold,” Baiz said from the podium that evening. “In our zoning code we have over 210 definitions. Only three of those deal with agriculture — something that represents one-third of the town’s land mass,” he said.

“We’re beyond the point of discussion,” Baiz added. “We’re 98 percent where we want to be. I urge you all to support this.”

The code revision passed unanimously.

“First and foremost, I hope everybody appreciates the difficulty this board has trying to develop consensus on this legislation when there does not seem to be a clear consensus on the legislation as proposed from the agricultural community,” the supervisor said before casting his vote in favor to adopt.

“Ultimately we have a lot of work to do,” Russell said. “It’s difficult to think that all of agriculture can be brought under one umbrella definition. There are so many different segments of the industry, each with different needs. I’ll vote to adopt and I think we need to sit down and add a whole lot more. The industry much more diverse than 13 or 14 definitions can capture.”

The town will next turn its attention to agricultural use regulations, putting to work the definitions devised by the ag advisory committee and adopted by the board this week. The committee has already begun working on the use regulations.

“The people in this industry today are basically your gene pool for the future,“ Baiz said Tuesday night. “If you want to have agriculture as a major land use in the town, having the code helps develop business plans to help agriculture move forward.”

Nearly 25 percent of the farmland in Suffolk County is located in Southold, which is second only to Riverhead (with 39 percent), according to the Suffolk County Agricultural and Farmland Protection Plan completed in 2015. Southold has more than 9,600 acres of farmland, 44.6 percent of which is protected. Twenty-eight percent of the land in Southold is in agriculture, according to the county plan.

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Denise Civiletti
Denise is a veteran local reporter and editor, an attorney and former Riverhead Town councilwoman. Her work has been recognized with numerous awards, including a “writer of the year” award from the N.Y. Press Association in 2015. She is a founder, owner and co-publisher of this website.